


Two Men in a Bowl

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Fiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-13
Updated: 2006-01-13
Packaged: 2018-11-20 20:26:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11342619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: The title should have been Two Men and a Fruit Salad. Because that's actually how the drama started.





	Two Men in a Bowl

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

Two Men in a Bowl

## Two Men in a Bowl

### by Griva

##### [Story Headers]

  


Two Men in a Bowl 

Rating: R  
Timeline: AK has 2 hands, so before T/T. With flashbacks to a continuous relationship before DB/Asc. Summary: Blame all the break-ups on kiwis? If seriously, sometimes small whims lead to disasters...The guys get as dysfunctional as possible ... because I missed the drama and emotions on the edge. 

Beta'd by Jynn. 

* * *

"I hate you!" 

Your face is bright red. Your jaws are clenched and just a second ago I could hear your teeth glide against each other in a sickening manner. Hot tears are running down your cheeks and they burn my skin as I press your face into the crook of my neck. You fight me with everything you've got but I'm stronger this time - I don't hold back, I let myself overtake you - and I press you to the floor, keeping you trapped between the hot weight of my body and the coolness of the floorboards. I press your wrists into the floor and you writhe beneath me, trying to escape. 

"Let me go! Right now! Do you hear me?! Just let me the fuck go! I hate you, I hate you! I fucking hate you, do you understand?" 

Your voice is low and catching, but it booms through me as your breath hits my face. Your words hurt me more than you know and I press my face into the crook of your neck now, trying to block out the hate that radiates from your voice. You don't mean that. I know you don't mean it. You say that all the time and I know it's not true. You told me it isn't and I believed you. It still hurt me though. I don't tell you that anymore because you would only use it against me, but it does. 

Your teeth sink into my shoulder, drawing blood instantly, not letting go immediately. Your jaws clench around an old wound and a scream dies in my throat. I clench my jaws in response and bury my face deeper into you, inhaling your scent, trying to escape from the pain by focusing on the way you smell. 

After a minute or two you let go and I feel the heat of my blood, trickling down my shoulder until it reaches a point where our chests meet. When you feel my blood on you, soaking through your thin pricey polo-shirt, coming in contact with your own skin, you start writhing even more violently, throwing me off you, to the side. 

You get up quickly and take a few steps back. You look at me, hate and disgust melting into a hurtful mask on your face as your eyes rake over my defeated body. You wipe my blood from your lips and it looks like you're about to vomit from the mere taste of me. I can't look at you anymore. I have to protect myself from your hate so I avert my eyes. I rest my chin on my knees and don't look up, not even when you say those words that hurt me even more than the ones you uttered just a few moments ago. 

"This is the last time I let you go, you rat-bastard, with all your half-truths and disclosures that are worth shit! Get lost while you can, while I try to enjoy the fucking weekend..." 

I hear the sound of decisive steps against the floorboards as you walk toward the door. The door opens and I'm hit with a rush of cool air and the smell of rotting water outside the dock warehouse where I've summoned you. The heavy door slams violently after your departure. 

At times like these, I feel so little. No matter what I do, what I give you is in vain. I just want to go back to when I was still a little boy who hid behind his mother whenever a stranger tried to look at him. Back to my mothers loving arms. Then back to loving arms. Your loving arms. 

I've learned not to cry when you leave me like this. It's not that I've grown accustomed to it because I never could. It hurts more and more every time though I've learned not to pay notice to pain of almost any kind. I just know that crying won't help me. Maybe I don't have any more tears. At least not for this sort of thing. 

I should have stopped meeting you like this because it's like slitting the just healed wrist again and again to bleed out drops but never dying... 

I don't know how much time passes before I get up off the floor and start cleaning the blood off my shirt and the floorboards. I'm on autopilot as I reach down and pick up the shards of old broken glass from the floor and I don't even wince when I cut my hands on them. God's joke that I had to trip up on them right now...I remember.... This is where it all began that day... 

There was a sticky mess of fruit salad mingled with glimmering pieces of glass beside the kitchen table... 

* * *

Mulder walked into the kitchen, water dripping onto smooth, white skin that covered his shoulders. In one hand he was holding a dark blue shirt, made of thin cotton. In his other hand, he was holding a towel, rubbing off the last drops from the shower. He smiled as he entered and saw Alex, bent over whatever he was making for dessert. He draped the towel over a chair and snuck up behind the other man, his arms circling Alex's waist. Slowly he ran his hand upwards and he ran his fingers through the black, silky hair. 

Alex turned around in his arms and gave him a soft smile while he caressed Mulder's wet hair out of his face. Alex always reminded Mulder of an angel with his childishly round cheeks and smooth, baby skin, broken by a roguish smirk from time to time. He was slender and beautiful. He said, with surly embarrassment that in his baby pictures he looked like a little girl. Only the blonde curls were missing, Mulder teased mercilessly. 

But in fact all that was missing were the blue eyes. However, Mulder thought that the deep, dark eyes suited Alex much better though. He loved when they looked like this. Seeing only him and no one else. Sometimes they were alert and enigmatic but in the intimacy of their closeness they shone with love for him. 

Mulder brought the other man closer to him, feeling the heat radiating off his body, making him a little dizzy. Their lips collided in a brief kiss before Alex drew back and looked into Mulder's eyes as if asking for permission. This tameness that was not quite in Alex's characters and that he demonstrated it as his exclusive gift for Mulder, was heady. Mulder smiled and slid his arms around Alex's neck, drawing them even closer together. 

They pressed their lips together again and the kiss rapidly became more and more intense. He heard Alex sigh into the kiss with pleasure and his lips were so warm against Mulder's own. They tasted intoxicating. Not like anything he'd ever tasted before and he couldn't grow tired of it if he tried. This was a taste that was Alex's own. No wonder Mulder wanted to bind Alex and keep him, to ensnare him so that he can never leave. He wanted to know him in the darkness, again and again, where all the frustrations of words might be left behind. Mulder wanted to be known too, and...be accepted. As he moved down to kiss his neck, he heard Alex moan softly. The man was giving himself over completely to him. In bed Alex was raw and fierce and needy, and Mulder would lean down into him and would be lost and that drove Mulder mad with love and want for his unconventionally non-blond angel. 

"Fox..." 

His name rolled off Alex's lips like a prayer and Mulder shivered with growing pleasure. Mulder loved the sound of Alex's voice. It was mellow, somehow, yet strong. A voice that although not loud, made people listen, a voice they trust. When Alex said Mulder's name he would prefer to forget -- and he did that often - Mulder would think about running his thumb over Alex's mouth, pushing it past his lips. Instead, he kept kissing and licking at the other man's neck, driving them both toward higher sensual pleasure. It was truly heaven on earth, holding onto his lover like this, hearing all those luscious sounds he was making. Knowing that this was all for him and no one else. Alex's hands were playing with his hair, tugging playfully then caressing tenderly. Mulder's own fingers were exploring the soft skin on Alex's back, slowly making their way up his neck and cupping his head for another assault. Maybe they should postpone the evening out and stay inside... 

"I love you, Alex. I love you." 

Mulder was breathless with the kisses they shared and he was clinging to Alex desperately. Alex's hands were rubbing indolent circles into his back as they slowly regained their composure as he whispered that there was a sweet course ahead and that they have a long night in front of them. After a while they broke apart and Mulder put his shirt on while Alex finished making the dessert. They didn't say anything to each other. Mulder sat down on a chair and watched Alex intently. 

"What are we having for dessert then?" he asked as Alex turned around, now finished with his work. 

"Fruit salad. Here you go." He said with a small smile as he placed a bowl before his lover. He sat down on the chair opposite of him and started eating his own salad reaching for freshly whipped cream to add. 

Mulder was quiet. The air around him changed and Alex swallowed hard, sensing the change and suddenly his appetite was gone. Even before he lifted his gaze, he knew that the Mulder he loved was gone now. Instead, he would find an empty look on Mulder's face. 

Right he was. As he lifted his eyes, he was met with an empty look. Mulder's face just an abandoned mask, cold and void of all the vitality, mirth and love that was just gracing his features. He looked not like his lover but like there was a blood-thirsty maniac in front of him. His usually warm brown eyes looked dead and hollow. His hands were clasped and he sat rigidly in his chair. He had yet to touch his fruit salad. Alex was afraid to ask but he did anyway: 

"What's wrong?" 

"I don't like kiwis." 

That was not true. Alex knew that. Just the day before, Mulder had told him to go to the store and buy some bananas, oranges and kiwis. He didn't mind kiwis. What he meant was perhaps, that he didn't want them now. Alex didn't comment on this. Sometimes Mulder was ... changeable. And impulsive. He would demonstrate his need to be fickle and pampered to the chosen ones. And Alex would not mind, considering it an endearing whim of otherwise a man whom he considered almost perfect. Alex turned his eyes down and looked at his own fruit, covered in whipped cream. They looked horribly distasteful now and he had to put some effort into not spitting onto his plate. 

"Why did you put kiwis in my dessert when you know I don't like them?" 

"I'm sorry." This seemed the only appropriate answer. 

"No, you're not." 

"I am. Please forgive me, okay? I'll make you a new one. Without kiwis." 

"You don't have to. It's not even about the kiwis!" 

Mulder's eyes were boring holes into Alex and he didn't dare look up. He didn't want to see them stained with detest. And to be honest, he was getting aggravated, he could not understand not what, but WHY Mulder had to reproach him like this this time. But he did not have to wait long as the ringing silence around them demanded an answer. 

"You don't know me, Alex. That's what this is about. You don't even try!" 

Mulder pushed his chair back violently and griped the edges of the table, his knuckles whitening with his effort. 

"Fox, please. You know that's not true. Just please, forgive me and let me make it up to you." 

Alex reached out his hand and caressed Mulder's white knuckles, trying to make the bad-one go away, trying to coax his loving, sweet Fox back. Couldn't Fox see that this did not matter for Alex, that he would step over this bout of irritation, that this was not important? He knew his attempts were futile when Mulder shook his hand off of his own. 

"No, I don't want dessert anymore. I think I'll just go out now." 

He made to leave but Alex got up and threw himself over the table, knocking the bowls of fruit salad to the floor. The bowls shattered into glittering pieces and the salad was ruined. He succeeded though. He had gotten hold of Mulder's wrist and he climbed quickly over the table to wrap his arms around the other man. 

"No! Fox, please don't go! Please! What...shit is this!" 

Openly angry now and demonstrating it, Alex felt so dirty and tainted as he pressed his mouth against Mulder's neck, trying to keep him from leaving. Call him mopey and call him soft, but it's happened to him for the first time too and he couldn't bear the thought of Mulder going off, god knows where because Mulder was capable of doing something in the heat of the moment he would regret bitterly later. Whatever it was, he had to stop Mulder. 

"Let go of me! You are hurting me!" 

Mulder was trying to escape from his arms and he knew that he was probably using more force than necessary to keep the older man in his embrace. It was hurting Alex, having been reduced to this, to keep Mulder with force by his side. He didn't care. He couldn't afford to care. He would lose Fox to those others if he did. 

"I hate you!" Mulder spat, eyes wild and shirt open on his chest. 

"Well then go fuck yourself, you puffed up psycho!" Alex lost his temper, feeling something in him breaking, crumbling and shattering as he yelled and let go of the other man's wrists, Mulder storming out the door, the echo of his parting curse stinging Alex's ears: 

"That's exactly what I'm going to do! I'm off to get my brains fucked out. Heaven knows I wouldn't be able to get that from you once." 

* * *

Yes...that's what he told me, in the heat of the moment. Then I still tried to rationalize why Mulder did that to me. Probably because we started to live together a couple of weeks ago and we didn't have any neutral corners to go back to. I mentioned that one time and one time only, because when I said it Mulder assumed I meant that I wanted to move out and he got all huffy and I'm terribly sorry if I'm intruding on your personal space, Alex, and it took almost an entire day of me holding him down and making him come until he stopped being huffy and realized that I wanted truly to stay... And just like right now, in this stinking warehouse, in the hushed dimness of his apartment, I had to do something...to occupy myself to kill the unbearably sluggish moments of expectation. When I finally was done with cleaning the kitchen, I walked to the bathroom and undressed, stepping into the shower. It seemed like the right thing to do although I was not dirty. I could still smell Mulder's soap in the air, the sweet, musky scent of his shampoo. My hands traveled along the shower walls and I let the hot water wash away, wishing it'd take me away too. I washed my body with his soap and his shampoo. I knew I had my own but could that night get any worse? I was willing to take a chance. This was the only way I'd get to experience this scent that night anyway... 

The first times I followed him when he left like this. It didn't do me any good. I saw him going off to bars where hungry, detestable men touched him and he let them. I saw him follow them to their cars, I saw him let them kiss him or more often - just paw or grab him. Then they drove off and I was left there, alone and shocked at seeing the one I loved more than anything, throw my love away for these scumbags. I didn't sleep. The first time, I confronted him the next morning when he came home, smelling of alcohol, blood, sweat and something I didn't want to know. But we didn't talk because it was just...obvious. I considered waking him up to talk to him about it, but he'd get pissed. Or worse, he'd laugh. He'd be filled with guilt and I'd just be...empty. Now I thought that maybe if I hit him or called him names, he would have stopped. But I did not because that would be... a power-game. I sensed he expected this from me - the abuse, the violence, the hysterics, the humiliation, but I was stubborn. I thought I'd win over him by non-resistance. Now I know I did, but then I thought I had not. Since then he hadn't even tried to hide his affairs from me. 

Just once I decided to teach him a lesson. This was not worth it. I packed my bags and put them in my car and I just left. I drove around for six hours. When the first lights of a new day started to show at the horizon, I found myself in front of our door again. When I entered our apartment, he was sitting in a corner, clutching a broken frame. He was sobbing violently. When he saw me in the door, he rushed forward and flung himself at me, burying his face in the crook of my neck. I let him, feeling his hot tears against the side of my neck. 

"Why did you leave me? I can't live without you, don't you know that? I need you! It just...gets more and more clear with each time I want you gone!" 

I believed him. That was the night I forgave him, because he hadn't done anything wrong. He just seemed to be unable to solve it any other way. And because it was just so fucking pitiful. I unpacked my bags and we made love. He was more clingy and desperate than ever and it drove me mad with love, lust and need for him. Only later, when he was already asleep at my side, his fingers clutching at my hair, like a child, did it dawn on me that he never actually apologized. 

He never does. He hadn't apologized once since this whole thing started. By now, I don't expect he will ever do that. I know better than to dream about things that will never be. 

It never mended though after that time and it took just a few weeks for me to realize that if I don't leave, he would not last long. He would ruin his job, his reputation, his health and his mind, sooner or later. So I did it at the first occasion, staging it as bad as it could be - I betrayed him. 

... Now I feel I'm finished. Time to get lost. My clavicle hurts but I try to ignore it. It will pass. It hurts to even remember that once we were are so happy together, where he's only mine. Just for a moment, I lean against the dilapidated wall and breath. Slowly. Just give me a moment and I will hit the road. I will never come back because eventually one of us will get killed. And I can't fully ignore his treat of having me run in. 

I wake up to soft fingers caressing me. I don't open my eyes immediately, but I don't reach for my gun either. The fingers push my hair away from my forehead and they caress my lips gently. I know whom they belong to despite the foreign smell that comes from them. I twist my head, away from those fingers that cause me so much pleasure and pain at the same time. My eyes are still closed but he knows I'm awake now. I feel his lips against mine, pressing down gently, then with more force. I think I taste another mans semen from his sweet lips and I feel like throwing up. This is just a bad dream, Alex... I twist my head to the side again, opening my eyes slowly. 

"It would have been so easy and ended there if you fell asleep on a crime scene that night when you killed my father, you piece of shit!" 

Not a dream then. 

"You sure it would have?" I give him my best, most innocent: who, me, lover-boy? Look and I see him break. I know he has nothing to back up his endless accusations. 

Mulder has a mixed look in his eyes. Two feelings chasing each other. In one moment there's the coldness and detest then it is gone in the next and there's desire and desperate need instead. His fingers are grabbing my hair and he pulls at it so much that my vision clouds with tears. Then he caresses me with clumsy, urgent moves. I turn away whenever he tries to kiss me, that's how much I can resist him. His touching I can bear but not him kissing me. He's onto me though. He takes my face into both of his hands and he holds my face in place as he kisses me with force. His tongue forces its way into my mouth so I can taste more of whoever he just let fuck him. The tears are now running down my cheeks and I'm lax in his arms. His kisses are urgent, clumsy and desperate. I know he is trying to save me, in his own way. He must be thinking that whatever has happened, I'm not rotten deep. He can catch me, prevent me from slipping away. If I would only confess- 

But he doesn't let himself think about how much he craves this urgent intimacy, deep in blood and bone. In these dreadful days, I have become a comfort and a terror, the center of all his attention and hate and need, and everything around me is growing pale and grey. So he would fuck me violently, staring up into my dark unblinking eyes, and afterwards his breathing would grow shallow and slow. 

When he's finished abusing me, he slumps down, his head resting on my chest as he sits on the floor next to me. His fingers are still holding onto my hair in a painful manner but it's not as painful now as it was before. I can't stop myself from lifting my hands and letting my fingers get lost in his dripping hair. It's been raining since last night. 

His suitpants are splattered with dirt. It looks like he's been walking through a ditch. That he's been kneeling in a dirty alley. He smells bad. He smells like dirty sex, another man's sperm, alcohol and just all things nauseating. There's not a trace of his own scent. Not the musky shampoo he put so much time in washing his hair with, not his soap, not the scent of his skin, nothing. Just the repulsive smell of what he has just done. He tries to stop being himself. Just like me. But he pulls it off much worse. I don't let myself be abused anywhere but here. He wastes himself with such efficiency on all fronts that my back grows cold. 

Mulder lifts his face to look at me. His remarkable eyes are boring into me and I'm sucked in. There's a bruise on his left cheek and I find myself tracing it with my fingers. He doesn't even flinch. His lips are parted slightly, swollen from having kissed me, swollen from having done what he's done. 

I wonder what lie he would feed to his Red tomorrow? Another mugger? He is one damn mugger magnet. 

I sit up and he does the same on the floor. He looks miserable, sitting there, a forlorn look in his weird, changing eyes. I try to get up and pick him up. He does not want me to, he hides his face in the crook of my neck. I can feel his breath against the wound he's inflicted on my shoulder just an hour ago. I know he can see it but he doesn't say a word. Not that I'd expected him to. 

Finally we stumble out. It's about 2 am, the docks are dark and filled only with the sound of the river that never sleeps. He has a cheap rental and I know the way to the motel where they ask no questions and remember no faces. 

I take him to the bathroom and undress him there, gently as he watches me intently. Although wordless, he seems to be fully himself now. I swallow the accusations and the bad words and thoughts that circle around in my head as I see the bruises on his skin. He's still looking at me, daring me to say something. I keep my eyes carefully away from his. He does remove his underwear himself and I struggle to keep my face straight, not let a horrified gape distort it as I see the blood and semen in there. The blood is still fresh and I know I blanch for a moment till I realize it's not his asshole that is bleeding but a scratch, from someone's fingers (I don't allow to think - teeth), on his thigh. 

Without looking at him once, I run some water in the bathtub and pour some soap in it. I feel the water with my hands and make some foam. When there's enough water in the tub, I lift him in my arms again and push him in it gently. Then I start washing his bruised body. I find it very unsettling that he's still staring at me, as if waiting for me to say something or to leave him there. I do neither. I wash his hair, using the same soap, rubbing it in gently, cleansing him of his bad deeds. Finally, I make him stand up and turn around, now facing his naked butt. He sluices the foam himself from the rest of his body. His muscles are liquid under his skin. 

Finally, he reaches out and I give him a towel, he dries himself hastily and then reaches out to grasp my shoulder. He clings to me like a child and I hug him close as I dry his back. I can feel his hot breath on my neck, his lips so close to my skin, I can almost feel them on me. I wrap him in the towel and peel off my own wet jacket and unbutton my jeans, acrobatically wriggling out of them. I use the towel to dry his hair a little more, watching it get drier by the moment. When I'm finished I push him down on the bed and tuck him in, then I move to my side of the bed and turn my back to him. I don't even close my eyes as we lay there in silence for what seems like a really long time. 

"Please hold me." 

I'm surprised he's talking to me. I knew he wasn't asleep because I've been listening to his breathing enough to know when he is. I turn around and he moves closer, until our bodies collide. He puts his hands on my chest and I wrap my arm around him protectively, inhaling his scent. It's him again. His own scent. Not his cedarwood shampoo, his Palmolive soap but still him, just him. But beyond all that, I can still smell that bad smell and I hold my breath for a few moments. 

In moments like this I have never wanted to throttle anybody as many times as I've wanted to throttle him, not even Marita and I've known her something like ten times as long as I've known Mulder. I know the peace we have won't last, that in a day or a week or a month one of us will do something that drives the other one absolutely insane, but I'm OK with that. I'm OK with that because I think that if we keep on working on it, if we keep working to keep what we got that in the end, we'll make it. 

In a moment, I feel stubble scraped against my palm as I see Mulder smile, with a wavering, looking up at me with unsettling stillness. I didn't move at all as he leaned in, slowly and cautiously, and kissed me. For a moment neither of us moved, holding the press of mouth to mouth. I could feel the tickle of his breath, could feel my own heart beating faster and the faintest tremor under my fingers on his cheek, belying that stillness. It was an offer, not a demand and for a moment, I knew we could do it right. One shall we have it right, but for now...Then his hand settled on my hip, pulling me closer. I settled a hand on the back of his neck, as I drew him back down, and this kiss was wet and hot and going places. 

"Promise me you won't ever leave me, Alex. I need you. You know I need you. I just...can't fucking help it." 

My hold on him tightens, but I keep my hands scrupulously off anywhere below Mulder's shoulders, my eyes averted--if I looked, if I touched, I didn't think I could stop before I answer. I look up past the slant of Mulder's jaw into the dark eyes that looked back at me, more open and vulnerable than I had yet seen them -- except in memory. And I can't fight my own tears as I nod in a resigned sort of way. 

I know I'll never leave him. He's my everything. He's mine. Even on nights like this he's still mine and I can't let him go and he knows this. I hate what he does to me and I want to get out but I can't. When he says these things I get more and more convinced that I will never leave him. Slowly, all my defenses get crushed and all the doors close around me and I know there's no way out. I'm trapped and while it hurts me and takes something from me that I know I'll never get back, I still can't get enough and I can't let go. 

"I promise." 

/end 

  
 

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Title:   **Two Men in a Bowl**   
Author:  Griva   [email/website]   
Details:   **Standalone**  |  **R**  |  **26k**  |  **01/13/06**   
Pairings:  Mulder/Krycek   
Category:  Story, Angst   
Summary:  The title should have been Two Men and a Fruit Salad. Because that's actually how the drama started.   
  
  
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